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Sunday, January 6, 2013

Complete sets: 2000 SPx Rookie Update baseball

Today I'm back with the first complete set showoff post of the new year. As usual, I opted for a set that wasn't too large because I didn't have the time or energy to do a ton of scanning today, but I still think I picked a good one.

2000 SPx Rookie Update baseball was a beautiful looking set that continued Upper Deck's premium foil/holographic design process. Cards were of the vertical variety and featured an action shot plus a smaller close-up. The top of the card included the player's team's division, the year and the SPx logo while the bottom gave the player's position and team, plus a tinier SPx logo. Between the two photos the player's name appears vertically, and the player's number is outlined in foil in the bottom-left corner of the larger player photo.

Card backs included the team name, player's position, and team logo up top. The same smaller player photo that appeared on the front was also shown on the back, then the player's name (again, vertically), followed by a blurb about that player, with a large version of the player's jersey number below that. Up to five years of a player's stats were listed, having been rotated 90 degrees to fit, and below those were their career numbers. Finally, each player's height, weight, etc., are listed vertically.

The original set included 90 base cards followed by 30 on-card auto/RCs numbered between 500 and 1500. Updated cards were available in a product called Rookie Update, which included update cards for several other UD sets as well. That version featured 30 RCs serial-numbered to 1600, 15 more autographed RCs numbered to 1500, and 30 base cards, some of which feature players that changed teams that season.

So what you'll be seeing today is the complete 30-card base set of 2000 SPx Rookie Update baseball. If a player is appearing on a new team on his card, I've made sure to note that with a "*".

Here's the back of the set's first card, Darin Erstad, to give you an idea of how these looked:

Not bad, right? I bought a few packs of the main set but they were too expensive for set-building so I never went beyond that. All the same, I'd love to grab the original 90-card base set sometime as it's one of my favorite designs.

Well, what do you guys think? Is anybody else familiar with this set, and whether or not you are, do you love it, hate it, or don't care?